Annika Östberg and the police murder in Lakeport

Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.

The only Swede on Death row

One spring day in 1981, 27-year-old Annika Östberg and her boyfriend, Bob Cox, have arranged to meet with a restaurant owner to resell a batch of meat. The deal doesn’t go through – Bob shoots the restaurant owner and the couple decides to flee the country. But instead of making it across the border, they meet traffic police officer Richard Helbush. An encounter that will have a fatal outcome.

The couple is arrested and placed on death row, the section for inmates who are to be executed. According to the murder investigation, it is the boyfriend, Bob Cox, who is holding the gun during both shootings.

However, the verdict states that the murders were committed in agreement with Annika Östberg. She admits to double murder and is sentenced to life imprisonment.

Many people are getting involved in Annika’s fate as a foreign prisoner. Some media outlets are pushing the issue that she should be transferred to a Swedish prison. School classes are writing letters to the California governor. At the same time, criticism is being directed at the involvement

– ​​why show sympathy for a convicted double murderer?

Annika Maria Östberg Deasy (born January 6, 1954) is a Swedish citizen formerly incarcerated in California for an undetermined period;

(25 years to life sentence).

She was convicted of first-degree murder of a restaurant owner and a police officer in 1981.In April 2009, after 27 years in a California prison, Östberg was handed over to Swedish authorities and transferred to Sweden, and incarcerated in the Hinseberg women’s prison north of Örebro. She was released in May 2011.

THE STORY OF ANNIKA ÖSTBERG.

Annika Östberg Deasy served 28 years in an American prison for two murders she was involved in in 1981

Neither of them had a driver’s license, but they fled in a white Chevrolet after visiting her dealer. Maybe they could get to Canada. In any case, they had to leave, because just over a day earlier, Bob Cox had cold-bloodedly shot and killed a man in Stockton.

“Hi, it’s Ann. We have goods for you. We have meat. If you have $300, we’ll deliver.”

That was the conversation with Joe Torre, a 58-year-old man Annika Deasy knew who wanted to buy meat cheaply for the family’s restaurant. On April 30, they met at an arranged location. But there was an argument over payment. Torre only had $100.

Suddenly, Bob Cox shot the man to death with his Smith & Wesson revolver.

She had never seen anyone shot to death before; he had a history as a violent criminal, soldier, and prison inmate in Turkey. Shocked and with strong withdrawal, Annika Deasy agreed to pull.

 

Torres’ stolen credit cards came in handy when they needed food; the notes they had received were enough for a heroin fix, Valium and vodka. The worry and shock still wouldn’t let go. But before they could leave California, Annika Deasy wanted to say goodbye to her eleven-year-old son Sven, who was then living with his father in a trailer park in Lake County.

But where? The couple couldn’t find him in the dark. They started arguing, he drove off the road and she disappeared into the woods to pee. When Annika returned, something happened that would be crucial for the rest of her life.

The Chevy had a flat tire, and a 35-year-old police officer stopped to help.His name was Richard Helbush and he was on his way home from work. But Bob Cox must have thought he was after Torres’s robber-murderer, because in a panic he also shot Sergeant Helbush – with four shots.

Now he was a double murderer – who also took the police car to escape, with Annika Deasy by his side.

A highway patrol caught up with the couple, and a gunfight broke out that led to mutual injuries. She helped him reload the gun, although she didn’t quite succeed .The whole thing ended with Cox and Deasy being taken to the Lakeport jail.

And that’s where Bob Cox’s life ended completely, and one day he hung himself with a sheet in his cell. Annika Deasy was now solely responsible for both murders.

Her petty criminal background was hardly a mitigating factor. She had a series of suspended sentences under her belt: larceny, credit card fraud, and a murder that she had taken the blame for in 1974, reportedly to help a boyfriend.

The worst part in the eyes of those around her was that one of the people shot dead was a police officer.

Annika Deasy felt an enormous moral guilt, partly for having arranged the meeting in Stockton, and partly for having wanted to search for her son afterwards. But she didn’t consider herself a murderer, even though she hardly tried to stop Cox.

–He was cold-blooded, a natural killer. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing. But she was involved. They fled together, from the murder of Torres

says Don Anderson – one of the police officers who arrived at the scene and arrested the couple; today a defense attorney in Lakeport.

– She could have run but she didn’t. Instead, she helped distract him so he could shoot. In my eyes, that also makes her a “cop killer.”

Don Anderson says that for a long time after the shooting, he felt paranoid and extra worried about his children. He and his colleagues were mocked by some Lakeport residents for not immediately shooting the police killers.

–The worst was for Sheriff Bill Bloomquist. He took the girls to task for failing miserably, became an alcoholic and died ten years ago. Since it was a case of two murders, one of which was of a police officer, the death penalty could have been considered – or life in prison without the chance of appeal.

The lawyer Annika Deasy was given advised her to enter into a plea bargain with the prosecutor, which led to a sentence of “25 years to life” for murder. In August 1983, she arrived at the California Institution for Women, a women’s prison in the desert landscape east of Los Angeles.

But how did Swede Annika Östberg end up in Stockton, USA?

The path there was through some fortunate and a long series of unfortunate circumstances.

She was born in 1954 in Stockholm, grew up in Gärdet and Hässelby, and spent her summers with relatives in Söderhamn. When she was four years old, her parents divorced, and a few years later her mother remarried a wealthy American. Mother and daughter moved to his hometown, St. Louis, Missouri, in the heart of the American Midwest.

But the quiet Swedish girl felt odd and unwanted, both at her stepfather’s house and at school. Soon there was a rift between Annika and her mother Maj-Britt, who wanted to be loyal to her husband and the two younger siblings who were soon to arrive. That rift widened the more Annika rebelled. When she was not allowed to meet her boyfriend who was ten years older than her, they both ran away to San Francisco. Annika was just a child – 13 years old, but looked older and was quickly drawn into the hippie circles of Haight Ashbury.

This was 1967, when The Summer of Love in California held out the promise of a free and carefree, cosmic existence. Annika finally found a community, and indulged in flower power, sit-ins, collective housing, concerts, rice casseroles, psychedelic patterns and drugs like LSD and marijuana.

Annika with her mother Maj-Britt and her son Sven, who died in a traffic accident at the age of 15. The picture was taken outside the prison.

But by the age of 14 she was addicted to heroin. At 15 she became pregnant, and soon she was forced to prostitute herself to support herself. Her mother, Maj-Britt, back home in Missouri, was resigned to the fact that her husband would not let her find her daughter.

At this time, Annika Östberg’s life was a series of experiences, but also of less suitable boyfriends. To give her little son a more secure existence, she chose to marry a truck driver and live a Svensson life in a small housing area in Stockton. Annika’s husband was named Brian Deasy, and that’s how she got her American name.

For several years, Annika Deasy adapted to housewife life for Sven’s sake, but when Brian fell in love with her friend and filed for divorce, the sad but secure existence fell apart – and when Annika met Bob Cox, things quickly went downhill.

“I’m not some Eleanor Roosevelt – just a lost and confused drug addict, says Annika’s voice in Tom Alandh’s film portrait of her.

“She was very young, very misguided and extremely intelligent,” says Susan Jordan, the first of several defense attorneys.

 

However, prosecutors have painted a different picture of Annika Deasy. In the parole hearing held in 2005 – which was denied – one of them tries to make it appear that she was actually the one holding the gun when Helbush was shot dead (which is not consistent with the investigation).

There are simply many images of the now 55-year-old Swede. They are connected to how one sees crime and punishment, guilt and reconciliation.

Richard Helbush’s daughters, who were seven and ten years old when he died, do not want to give interviews. But in the hearing held last year, Tara Salizzoni read a letter from her younger sister Dana McEvoy:

“Because of you, I have not been able to meet or speak to my father for 27 years. I have limited memories of the time we spent together, because I was so little when you murdered him.  But I remember what it was like to be seven years old and sit in a funeral home with my father in an open casket in front of me. I remember what it was like to stand at the grave and hear the sound of rifles and trumpets. I don’t think any seven-year-old girl should have to have that as her last memory of her father.”

At the meeting last year, it was decided that Annika Deasy needed more time to gain insight into her actions.

The committee that decides the length of the sentence considered that she minimized her involvement and did not show sufficient remorse, despite countless apologies. Good grades for participation in all the prison’s rehabilitation programs were less important.

Her defense attorney,believes that it would have taken him at least five years to get her out of American prison, if the Swedish government had not arranged a transfer to Sweden and Hinseberg.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt discussed the Annika Östberg case – but did not show it to the public. Photo: Scanpix

– I don’t know why it happened at this point. It was probably a combination of the legal process, political pressure and California needing to cut back on its prison population

says Ashok Ramani, whose law firm in San Francisco has worked pro bono for five years.

– Annika’s case is interesting, because it really shows how punishment and rehabilitation are viewed in California these days. It is very rare to see a prisoner who has managed to change his life and his personality as radically as she has. Yet it took 27 years before it was enough to be transferred to Sweden. All the focus is on the past. But that is mostly because it concerns a police murder.

Not only Swedes but also several Americans have become involved in Annika Deasy’s fate – for example Lewis Dolinsky, a long-time journalist at the San Francisco Chronicle, who has followed the case for ten years but has not wanted to speak out publicly until now:

–I certainly do not belittle her criminal past. But during her long time in prison, she has changed incredibly much. It is actually a heroic act to have made it.

– As humans, we are expected to believe that it is possible to atone and make amends for our sins. Annika has become a responsible person, who is now worthy of all admiration.